Off to the races

From The Washington Post:

DES MOINES, Sept. 6 -- Fred D. Thompson took his bid for the White House to the campaign trail Thursday, vowing to compete aggressively for the support of Iowans and pitching steady, experienced and conservative leadership.

"I still have the same common-sense conservative beliefs I did when I ran in 1994," the former senator said in a speech at a Des Moines conference center, a not-so-subtle reference to criticism about the changing positions of his main Republican rivals, former Massachusetts governor Mitt Romney and former New York mayor Rudolph W. Giuliani.

"The preseason is over," he declared. "Let's get on with it."

Whatever else you can say about Rudolph Giuliani he hasn't changed positions. As Mayor of New York he didn't think that his fellow citizens were responsible enough to be legally allowed to carry guns for self defense and he still doesn't.

Back then he believed that it was A-OK for a woman who found her pregnancy inconvenient to pay a doctor to chop her child into pieces and suck it into a jar. He still believes that.

He does seem to have changed his position on illegal immigration. Back during his days as mayor he thought that illegal immigration was wonderful. The salvation of the nation was apparently to be found in an endless stream of illiterate and unskilled peasants whose knowledge of English was limited to, "please where is welfare office" trekking across he border to drive down American wages, spread disease and bleed the nation's taxpayers white through their demands on our social services.

Now he seems to have had something of a change of heart, but he really can't articulate why he was dead wrong before and what it was that has now changed his mind.